President Obama's energy push could loom large in 2014

Republicans see Obama's announcement as an early gift going into the midterms. | AP Photo

Democrats say that candidates up next year can create separation from the president by outlining their own energy agenda. Someone like Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) can tell voters that she is in line to chair a powerful energy committee if reelected, for example.

In Kentucky, the likely Democratic challenger to McConnell is Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. She would no doubt take pains to disagree with Obama on the EPA regulations.

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“If President Obama’s coal agenda is on the ballot, we’re gonna lose 70-30 in coal country,” said a Democratic strategist. “But that’s not how this plays out in campaigns. These issues are fought state by state.”

Republican strategists acknowledge that their biggest challenge is to prevent Democrats from separating themselves from Obama.

“If you have a ‘D’ after your name in 2014, you own this agenda,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brad Dayspring. “Simple as that.”

The NSRC attacked red-state senators individually Monday ahead of the speech, and it plans to press the issue further this week depending on what exactly he proposes. It’s a theme the party intends to return to over the next 17 months.

A big open question is how hard Obama pushes on the climate issue. If it’s just one token speech to placate environmentalists frustrated by his failures to follow through on old campaign promises, the issue is unlikely to become central next year. But if the president puts real political capital behind the effort, the possibility of a backlash grows.

“Obama may have just handed Mitch McConnell his best chance at a reelection victory,” said Benjamin Cole, spokesman for the American Energy Alliance, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group funded in part by the fossil fuel industry. “There is real, animated and palpable fear in coal country that the administration’s all-of-the-above energy policy doesn’t include them.”

The situation is different in House campaigns, largely because Republicans have already picked up many of the seats in regions where energy issues are most important.

GOP strategists believe Obama climate change-themed attacks could be particularly potent against Democratic Reps. Nick Rahall in West Virginia and Collin Peterson in Minnesota, two veteran members who have managed to survive reelection bids despite occupying conservative and rural districts.

Some Republicans argue that the president’s climate change push could resonate broadly in House elections, giving the GOP an issue to use against Democrats in economically hard-hit moderate-to-conservative districts where voters are anxious about electricity rates.

“Either the President does not remember or does not care about the cap-and-trade body count of 2010,” said GOP pollster Brock McLeary, and former top official at the National Republican Congressional Committee. “A second term of full-throated ideological politics of this sort will keep congressional Democrats on their heels for a long four years. It fits perfectly with the central rationale for this Republican Congress: Keep Obama inside the guard rails of mainstream politics.”

“It will work all across the House map,” said Brad Todd, a GOP media consultant. “The voters sent them some adult supervision in the form of a Republican House and they have decided that the voters’ instructions do not matter at all.”

League of Conservation Voters senior vice president for campaigns Navin Nayak said the victories of Democrats last November show that Republicans are fighting a losing battle on coal. He said Democrats in places like Alaska and North Carolina are experiencing the effects of climate change and new regulations will have a minimal economic impact.

“Overplaying that hand, as was done in 2012, is a real risk,” he said.